By Behn Fer. Hortaleza, Jr.
PIA Pangasinan Infocenter

GOVERNMENT and the academe in Dagupan City are joining hands to take a closer and more critical look at the sanitation and quality of water being supplied by the various water refilling stations for improved safeguards on public health.

The joint undertaking was sealed thru a memorandum of understanding signed last Wednesday between the city government thru Mayor Benjamin S. Lim and the Lyceum-Northwestern University thru its president, Atty.Gonzalo T. Duque.

Witnessing the agreement that calls for an intensive research on the potability of water processed and sold by the refill stations were Dr. Leonardo Carbonell, city health officer and Director Eugene Reyes, head of the LNU Research and Development Management Offfice.

The first of its kind of scientific and scholarly study on “selected physicochemical properties and microbial content “ of local water supply to be conducted by a local university, the project takes off from a common recognition of the signing parties that a research on the subject “is essential for the formulation of measures (that) may be adopted by the local government or implementing agencies.”

The research will draw up a complete profile of water refill stations in the city in terms of location, volume of production, source of raw water, water treatment used, sanitation practices, quality control procedures and number of years in operation.

“In general terms, LNU will assess the potability of water from these refill stations to either confirm or revise earlier studies made on them by government teams or other private groups as regards their compliance to mandated sanitation and water quality standards,” Duque said in a brief interview after the signing of the MOU.

The Department of Health , it will be recalled, during the outbreak of Acute Gastro-Enteritis in several towns and cities of Pangasinan a couple of years ago had undertaken health inspection of most of the water refilling stations in the province and Dagupan City as a control and prevention measure. It later practically gave a clean bill of health to the local refillers when none of them were ever ordered closed afterwards.

Early this year however, the city government on orders of Mayor Lim, padlocked several water refill stations for non-compliance with permit procedures, not for any actual violation of sanitation and hygiene regulations.

The Research and Development Management Office (RDMO) of Lyceum Northwestern University has been a recipient of several grants from technical research organizations including the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for its academic work on, among other things, efficacy of commercial sponge filters to improve tap water potability quality, seed gum from paradise flower plant, floral extracts from different forms of gumamela, and antibacterial properties of four guava genotypes.

LNU stepped up its research component development starting in 2001, in line with a criteria for the grant of its university status and accreditation by the Philippine Association of Accrediting Schools, Colleges and Universities (PAASCU).